2025 “Happy Second Place Day” said my (American) wife today. That’s the traditional greeting she gives me on July 4th which I usually shrug off cos I’m bouncing out of the door with one eye on a midday meet up on a terrace somewhere for a nice long – ahem – business meeting. But on […]
2025 In your head when did Covid start? I’d say the main punctuation points for me were the first rumblings in Dec 2019/Jan 2020 through to the Cheltenham super-spreader event in March and then Boris closing the pubs and sending us home at the end of that month. So end of Feb you could say […]
2025 “It’s going to be a long summer” sighed one of my clients this morning and I had to agree with him as he ran me through the new vegetarian cookbook he’d bought at the weekend. You’ve got to deal with a broad array of interests in this job but, to be fair, he actually […]
Money’s getting a little too tight to mention at the moment so I’ll give you your 100 day warning klaxon to check down the back of the sofa and make sure you’ve not got any of the £14.5 billion of paper banknotes that are set to be withdrawn by the Bank of England. A whopping 477 million fifties and twenties (bullseyes and scores for the players) still in circulation but you’ll have to physically go to the Threadneedle Street to change them from Sept 30th.
Quite a few summer dresses and linen shirts knocking around the office today. A sense from those that managed to make it in that they could be slightly more stylish-yet-casual perhaps. The badge of honour of enduring the commute. A well-earned glass of something cold on a terrace beckoning as we bump over the hump. I think we’ve discussed the merits of the linen shirt before. Stylish but not too – ahem – challenging in terms of fit. Capable of hiding all sorts of lumps.
It’s nice to start your morning wfh but my goodness there’s not much beats finishing the day, signing off and being home already is there? Not a feeling I’ve had too much of late for my own reasons (mostly a pathological need to have people around me before the insecurity fully takes hold) but one I’m glad that most of you will have had today. Let’s embrace the positives of WFH on days like this.
Right then – walking boots on everyone. The biggest rail strike in thirty years starts in the UK tomorrow and you know the only way to get about is going to be by walking or cycling. Let’s look on the positive side and think about the health benefits. A whiff of rebellion in the air generally as unions from a range of professions including barristers, nurses and teachers all move towards “considering” strike action as the cost of living crisis starts to bite.
So there we have it. The UK bank rate back above 1% for the first time since 2009 as the MPC raise rates for a fifth consecutive time. 2009 sort of feels like it wasn’t very long ago but for context it was the year of Barack Obama being inaugurated as 44th President of the US, of swine flu, Michael Jackson’s death and the Icelandic banking system collapse. It was also the year I joined the mighty Redburn.
2025 OK lads – it’s time to step up. The Sunday Times and others reporting yet another critical supply chain issue out there as the backlog of hen do’s leads to a shortage of butlers in the buff. Brides-to-be in the UK need YOU (they’ve already rejected my application suggesting things are desperate but not […]
2025 So you know we love a word of the day here and there could be none more appropriate after the weekend than Clinomania – the excessive desire to remain in bed. A four day spectacular in the UK (if you weren’t one of the estimated one billion people to see it this was the […]